fish dreams

I used to have a recurring dream that I had a tank of angelfish, and they escaped and would swim around in the air. In my dream the fishes were always totally calm and nonchalant, but I freaked out and panicked trying to catch them and put them all back in the tank. I had this dream so many times, I even made an art piece depicting it.

Last week I had this dream again, but it's changed and I keep thinking about it. My house is different, it's one of those open-plan designs with the kitchen, dining area, living room all one open space. I'm in the kitchen prepping food for the fishes (from the freezer) when I notice they've come out of the tank and are swimming around me in the air. These are rainbowfish- beautiful bright large scales, shining color. There's a whole school of them, over a dozen, maybe twenty. They're cruising all around me, brushing up against my arms, circling up and down the room- and this time I'm not frightened or upset at all. I find it wondrous, I marvel at their colors and smooth sides and laugh in delight as they circle me over and over. Bright fishes in the air.

encounter, and a dream

I went outside to bury kitchen scraps in the compost pile, and there was a sudden scuffling through leaves nearby. Three possums. One ran past me and slipped through a fence gap, the other two retreated behind a tree and just stared, mouths open, when I approached slowly for a closer look (I didn't get closer than twenty feet). I suspect they were getting food out of my compost pile. They looked plump and thickly furred. My plastic bin is rucked up on one side and buckled, near where I have an old stump sitting- it's handy to place the container of scraps on while I dig a hole in the pile. I had thought the bin side was mussed up from contents shifting and settling where the ground has a lower spot? but now I think probably the possums were trying to get into it. I don't mind skinks living under my compost pile, or birds and squirrels picking through the top of it, but I draw the line at possums!

I'm going to simply quit adding stuff to this particular bin for the rest of winter. Between the worm bin inside and the metal can under the deck (which I haven't added to yet this season) I have enough other space to compost in. Without food there for a while I hope the possums will look elsewhere- and in spring when stuff heats up it will decompose faster which might avoid attracting them again? Or I need to fashion a lid for my bin, or get a new container that shuts out the animals better.

The deer have been through my yard, I found their droppings. And a pair of foxes- I found their footprints and saw two trotting right down the middle of the street in front of the house the other day. Beautiful thick coats but one had a skinny tail. And one day last week I saw a large bird sitting at the base of a tree in the rain, poking under the flaking bark. It was brown speckled with a red patch on the back of the head and a black crescent under the throat. A northern flicker! I don't remember seeing one so close before.

~

Dream from a few days ago. I'm visiting- or living in- my mother's house, my husband and kids are here too. I go out to the backyard and see something astounding: in a row along the wall of a gray shipping container shed in the back of the yard, tall lush plants have sprung up overnight from seeds I planted just a day ago. They have thick, straight stems, wide flat leaves like sunflowers, and incredibly large hanging flowers like brugmansia- solid pink with speckled throats. The plants tower to the top of the shed and the flowers nod alternating on each side of the stem. I stare, then turn and yell into the house: "Come quick, you have to see this! It's my hollyhocks, they're as big as S. is tall!" (my youngest). The flowers weren't really four feet each, more like two, and obviously not hollyhocks but that's what I call them in the dream, without a blink.

My family comes outside and we crowd around the huge, beautiful flowers. Then I look in the gray metal shed- it's new, empty and clean with a long workbench along one wall, shallow shelving, windows across one side up at the ceiling, propped open for the breeze. I look around thinking what a nice garden shed this would make, if I could build a greenhouse off one side of it to collect heat from the metal wall rising as the sun goes down . . . .

fish dream

From last night. I wish I had written this down sooner, because now I can't remember most of it...

In the dream I'm at some kind of fish convention, responsible for a display tank that has live plants, driftwood and a few various species including some really large cory catfish and kuhli loaches. It's a glass open-top, oddly shallow and square. I'm walking around just as the public comes in the door and passing my own setup glance over see that one of the catfish is upside down in a gap between two pieces of decor, the fins sticking up straight and stiff. I think Oh crap a fish died I have to get it out of there before a visitor notices, but I don't want to grab it right in front of people (someone is looking at another part of their tank with a kid) plus I really abhor touching dead fish with my bare hands so I hurry over to my supply cart to get a pair of long-handled aquarium tongs, picture myself grabbing the dead fish by its fin with the tweezers to lift it out but I really don't want anyone to see me doing it and know a fish died on me so I'm anxiously waiting for a gap in the steady stream of visitors-

then stuff happens and I go back to the tank instead of getting out the dead fish I'm going to move two live ones into another tank but I don't have any equipment with me I have to do this fast so I scoop them up with my hand, put them side by side on my forearm held carefully level, cover the startled fishes with my other wet hand so they don't jump or fall off, and dash over to the other tank drop them in!

Then I'm walking through the venue looking at all the displays and on a corner there's a huge tank installed it's taller than I am. Three or four huge gorgeous white angelfish with those pearly scales and flowing fins drift a foot or two above my head, their bodies at an oblique angle to the tank wall, leisurely looking down at us. They're more than a foot across (not counting the tail), giant fish. I stand stock still and stare up at them in awe, then I notice something that horrifies me. Their eyes are blank. Flat, silver reflecting blank. Blind, I think. I look very hard and can barely make out a tiny pupil like a little pinprick. It's creepy.

I glance down and see a placard in front of the tank that explains in great detail with numerous illustrations, how the breeder had a some fish with a genetic mutation that had smaller-than-normal pupils. It made them look perpetually startled and to his surprise people found that intriguing, so he kept breeding them like that and got ones with even smaller pupils- people thought those looked like "zombie angelfish" so he kept going with it. And now these beautiful, gorgeous, horribly blank-eyed freaks.

I woke up at that point.

I must note: in real life, I have never been to a convention having to do with the hobby, though I would like to someday. (However, I have been to numerous mineral-related shows with my husband so I think my brain filled in some details about what it's like to run a table at a show, from that).

I've never kept an open-top aquarium.

I do have an aversion to touching a dead fish with my hands. (Unless it's one I'm cleaning to cook. It's a pet one in the tank that just yesterday was alive and now is dead that I can't stand to touch)

I would never transport a fish on my forearm!

I saw tetras with completely black eyes (iris and sclera same color as pupil) at a store a few months ago, I'd never seen anything like that (before or since) and kept going back to that tank numerous times to stare at them. Maybe the angels with flat blank silver eyes relates to that memory. It's really stuck with me.

I do love angelfish. I am often taken aback by new shapes fish take on with breeding- the excessively long fins, the balloon bellies... I guess blank eyes was one step further my dream came up with! Ugh.

Real angelfish don't get that big, either!

kuhli dreams

I have been dreaming of fishes lately. I don't remember now what the one was last night, but a few weeks ago I dreamt of kuhli loaches twice in a row.

First I had a dream that I am visiting the house of a friend-of-a-friend, someone I don't know well. They are talking and I wander into another room, which belongs to a grown son who was away at college. There's a twenty-gallon fish tank installed into the wall, like a window straight into the tank. It's at eye level. It's nearly barren. A rumple of gravel on the bottom, not much else. But I see something moving and look closer- there are a few kuhli loaches in there, banded ones. And one is the biggest, fattest kuhli I've ever seen. It's so wide it looks gross, but I'm enthralled nevertheless. It looks to me like no one is taking care of these kuhlis and I really really want to rescue them and take them home with me, but I'm too shy to ask the host, they will think I'm being silly.

The second dream was similar- I go into an empty room and find a tank (this one better-cared for) with kuhli loaches in it. Here there are kinds I've never seen before- some very pale, their sides transparent like glass catfish- their spines visible, their stripes just pale gray bands. I'm fascinated. I know these fish aren't pale from sickness or stress- that it's a genetic anomaly. There are a few normal-looking kuhlis too, and some that are light tan with large black blotches near their front ends. I wonder if these two mating produced the clear ones, and if I did some selective breeding can I produce more. But then I think: they're so freakish looking, no-one will want clear kuhli loaches. I'd do better to breed like to like and get recognizable types. All this speculation while they aren't even my fish.

dream

I'm doing regular aquarium maintenance, putting equipment away when suddenly I realize I'm in a different house and I walk into another room, and there's four more fish tanks I forgot I had. The fish all look distressed, thin, ragged. Chagrined and desperate, I work feverishly to change all their water and improve the upkeep. Not sure they will all make it, but hopeful again I finish up the work and turn to the double glass doors that lead out to a broad backyard- again, new and different from what I'd expected to see. Lots of interesting plants but most impressive are several stout ponytail palms growing near the door, their greenery spreading several feet above my head. I have a few young ones in pots inside the house, but these are planted straight outdoors and I wonder that they survive the winters here. I puzzled over it- they must, or they wouldn't be here, but how is that possible? I pat their thick trunks and look up at foliage, wondering, when a sometimes-friend walks over to chat and she laughs thinking me silly for troubling my head over a plant that's obviously doing fine by itself. To her plants are a thing usually ignored- background stuff, you water it sometimes, if it dies you throw it away and get a new one. No big deal. But I still wonder at them, and concern myself greatly.

dream 4

We've had a very mild winter, only one day of snow flurries, and now in february it's already quite warm. But in my dream last night it is snowing outside. I look out the mudroom window, and there's a row of small shrubs planted across the driveway, where I intend to cut it off and grow stuff, making the entire driveway shorter. Everything is gloomy under the overcast sky, and dusted with white, that surreal look that snow can cause. My daughter is crowing with delight over the snow, my husband is saying I told you so and I am just hoping none of the tender plants will die.

I know what triggered this dream- my husband told me not to start planting garden seed, as february is always our coldest month. I insisted that spring is coming and started anyway. The bit that puzzles me is the line of shrubs across the driveway! In my dream they were planted right into the asphalt.

dreams...

Strange, I never remember dreaming about the garden before. Several nights ago I dreamed that someone in the neighborhood jumped a few backyard fences into my yard and started digging up my strawberry plants with a shovel! I run out to confront the thief: "Hey, stop! You're stealing my strawberries!" and he starts defending himself, before long we are in a halfway-amicable argument. Then my husband comes out and starts yelling threats and cussing the guy out, nearly takes a swing at him. The would-be thief takes off quickly, over the fence again. My fresas are saved.

The other dream I had a few days later. I'm in my mother's house, but her backyard is quite different, it all slopes up away from the house in one long hill, and she's got the entire hillside planted, a garden of vegetables and flowers. It's very early spring and we go outside to be amazed by a tree growing just outside the door. It's a freak tomato plant that somehow survived the winter, and not only that, but grew into tree dimensions. It's even got bark and stiff branches like a real fruit tree, but the hanging red globes are definitely tomatoes. We're all awed at this tomato-tree. I hike up the hill through the tangle of plants to see what else is growing. Lots of things I can't identify, or assume are weeds- but here is an uneven row of orange cosmos coming up where last years' were planted, and over there the wide leaves of swiss chard. I'm delighted at the rambling bounty of it all, even though half will need to be weeded out and tamed.

This last dream I had just yesterday. My backyard is flooded, an inch or two of standing water all over the lawn. I walk out into it, looking down at my feet and there are slugs swimming through the water, all over. Big, fat spotted slugs thicker than my thumb. An opportunity to get rid of them! so I run inside, get a plastic bag, and back outside start grabbing slugs out of the water, plop into the bag. They're wet and slippery but my hands don't get too slimy. I keep stooping to grab the biggest ones until the bag is full and then take it back towards the house, to tie up and throw in the trash bin. But the slugs keep squirming and crawling out, no matter how tight I tie the bag shut. I'm worrying they're all going to escape when I wake up.